


An Exercise For The Reader.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Community: contrelamontre, Episode: s05e17 The Modern Prometheus, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-16
Updated: 2008-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:56:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pay attention. You will be tested on this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Exercise For The Reader.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the contrelamontre forty-five-minute stories challenge.

Once upon a time.

Yes, indeed. How about that. Once upon a time. And so let us begin.

 

** Exposition**

Once upon a time, there lived a young man. He was a poet. He wrote an awful lot of poetry, most of it quite rubbish, but some of it rather good.

He had friends. One friend was called Doctor Adams. Doctor Adams was not like all other men. But he enjoyed the young man's poetry. He took him away. He taught him how to call lightening out of the very sky.

Another friend was named Percy Shelley. He also wrote poetry. Sometimes the young man thought Doctor Adams liked Shelley's poetry better than his. This made the young man very cross.

 

** Rising action**

The good Doctor Adams suggested a holiday. He did that whenever the young man had been very bad. But the young man was not ashamed. Secretly, he liked it when Doctor Adams was wroth and fearsome.

On one holiday, the young man killed someone for the very first time. After that, the Doctor took him into a room alone and explained the rules of a game.

I like games. Do you like games? Would you like to play this game? It's very fun.

It starts with two people, one of whom would like to kill the other. Shocking! But then a third enters. What may the dueling pair do? Shall they continue their unholy quarrel? Or shall they lay down their swords in the spirit of the brotherhood we all must share? It would be such a sin to kill and leave witnesses. None can see, you must understand. None must see when you take their last breath.

And this game, this very fun game, had yet more rules. Say your very worst friend would like to speak with you. Where shall you do it? The battleground? A forest? Nay, take sanctuary on God's land and conceal yourself in hallowed earth. And you mustn't kill him there. No, you must not.

The good doctor explained the rules to this young man. And they never spoke of it again. Never again. Oh, such finality in those words. Perhaps, instead, it shall be, they never spoke of it again for two hundred years. Yes, that is better. I prefer that.

 

**Climax**

The ladies of their party were fair and beautiful, each with their own graces and mischief. The doctor took a liking to a married woman, but it was no matter, because her husband took a liking to him. There was much joy and grace and rejoicing in those days. The doctor, with his affections spread equally all around, and the young man, with stars in his eyes and irreverence in his heart, partaking eagerly of all that was on offer.

But the fall of man comes suddenly and with no warning to those who tread upon this earth. Like thunder shaking the sky were the steps of our Doctor Adams as he came like the avenging horse man to deal out justice upon us, the sinners. He took up the young man's sword, stained red with blood, and shook it in the air.

"Who?" demanded Adams. "Who was it?"

The young man's responses did not placate him. The doctor was overwhelmed with emotion and bile, demanding to know upon whom the young man had dealt such an insult. He was not calmed by words or by deeds or by hands or by potion or by any other means available to the young man.

The young man was distraught. He did not know what to do to help his friend. The young man offered his head. The young man offered his poetry. Adams refused both.

"I shall return," Adams said, "one day. We will see each other again."

The last the young man heard of him, he had taken a train to Paris. They never spoke again. They have not spoken since.

 

**Falling action**

The sanctuary had been disturbed and it was the young man who did it. He had to make amends.

First, he destroyed the doctor's effects. Adams never left anything vital in the hands of strangers and the young man obliged him by destroying it all. The doctor's papers went aflame as did his books and his bedding. The young man destroyed his trail.

And then he tried to find him again. The young man released his words onto the world, so that they might find the doctor and whisper into his ear of the young man's continued survival. He wrote and he rode and he wrote some more and when it came time for him to die, he did it with no lack of spirit.

 

**Dénouement**

And as for that glorious game, the young man took it and examined it and found it to be the celebration of life he always knew it to be. There is no greater living than in the pursuit of death itself. The young man studied death in the whole and the abstract, subtracted the parts, and viewed the whole with nothing but awe and reverence.

Why play games with only your friends? That's never fun. Play with the whole world, kid. Take it in your hand and look at it. If you can survive this, you can survive anything.

 

**Response Questions:**

1) What was meant by "I shall return"?

2) Explain in a hundred words or less the nature of the game the author describes.

3) Is the character of Doctor Adams an example of an ideal? Why or why not?

 

**Thoughts to Ponder:**

1) What is the great joy in life when all of life is but an empty shell, hollow and screaming into the night?

2) Is there any god or goddess in all of creation who would damn me for loving him despite his deeds?

 

These, and all other oddities, are left as an exercise for the reader.


End file.
